Self-taught and multidisciplinary, Mayeul Irlinger uses collage, printing, installation and sound performance in his work.
In the early 2000s, he began experimenting with painting in an artistic collective and discovered negative lettering by masking. There, he noticed the possibilities of creating complex patterns that were both sophisticated and raw; the first paintings were made in informal places (streets, hangars, industrial wastelands). Also, the three favorite tools logically come from the urban and industrial world: building paint masking tape, acrylic paint and roller. He remains faithful to this principle of reusing everyday “non-artistic” materials by painting on plywood boards and other supports found in construction site skips or in the street. Describing his practice as "informational abstraction", he transcribes the invisible weaving of the interactions of the living: life perceived as a network of interconnected planes of existence: relational and social, cultural and religious, technical and informational, energetic and atomic (collective values, fashions, egregores, microwaves, electricity, atom). The most subtle layer of information (symbol of the creative void) is represented by the white projections systematically appearing in the foregrounds of the paintings: the only free elements of the compositions.
Strongly inspired by his experience as a screen printer, he developed a "negative" technique of accumulated strata alternating masking with tape and layers of paint (acrylics and spray paints) on plywood. The many layers are then torn off, revealing dynamic and vibrant compositions. Large textured compositions then emerge, we see an organic landscape, more or less chaotic, gathered or exploded. Each painting seems to be a snapshot of a weaving of events; an atmospheric photograph, reflecting the atmosphere of intertwined actions frozen in time.
Mayeul Irlinger also develops sound projects based on the same principles in order to create a "sonic weaving" that dialogues with his visual work. The sounds come from everyday objects, found or rummaged, amplified by means of micro-contacts and organized in multiple textured layers. We find the model of weaving and intertwined strata.
Also involved in pedagogy and popular education, Mayeul Irlinger has initiated numerous artistic workshops intended for various audiences, children and adolescents, audiences in difficulty, centers and foster homes, etc. but still remains quite misanthropic.